LONGMONT -- In a neighborhood already rich in history, a Boulder company is hoping to soon create its own bit of history by developing Longmont's first cohousing community.

The Bohn Farm Cohousing Community is a long-planned residential development to be built on six acres on the historic Bohn Farm property north of First Avenue and between Francis and Grant Streets in the Bohn Farm neighborhood southwest of downtown Longmont. The six acres sit empty today save for the home that dairy farmer Bob Bohn once lived in, which he had moved from Main Street to the property in 1928, when he was starting his dairy farm on what used to be the Donovan Brickyards.

The idea of a cohousing community on the property dates back to the middle of the last decade. Now, Boulder-based Wonderland Hill Development Co. has decided that the time is ripe to revive the idea. The company's project manager on the Bohn Farm Cohousing Community, Peter Spaulding, is hosting the first of what he says will be a series of public meetings today with prospective members of the community.

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"It's sort of an intensive process on our part," Spaulding said last week. "We spend a lot of time and money in developing these communities."

Wonderland Hill has built 23 cohousing developments in Colorado and other states, one of its most recent being Washington Village in Boulder. Cohousing is different from standard housing development in several ways:

Residents, with the help of experts -- such as architects and design engineers -- are the ones who plan what the community is going to look like and what kind of amenities it will have.

Peter Spaulding of Wonderland Hill Development Co. is the project manager for the long-planned Bohn Farm Cohousing Community. After being shelved for many years plans to build the project are moving forward again. (Lewis Geyer/Times-Call)
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LEWIS GEYER
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Residents who sign on to be a part of such a community tend to share some of the same values, such as putting a premium on being as "green" as possible. From Wonderland Hill's perspective, the goal is that Bohn Farm will be an "energy neutral" community, with the smallest carbon footprint possible. Again, the community members will decide just how far they go toward this end.

Residents own their own living space, but everything else is owned collectively by the community. Community gardens, a laundry facility and a clubhouse are all common amenities in cohousing, Spaulding said. It's even common for there to be a guest house for when community members have visitors.

The point of cohousing is to foster a sense of community and ownership, he said.

"We've sort of lost that today; we've sort of lost that sense of community," Spaulding said.

Jim Leach, the founder and president of Wonderland Hill, is the man behind the cohousing concept. He said his company has done more cohousing developments than any other builder in the country, and he's proud his company has settled on a model that has proven successful time and again.

"In terms of value we've been able to demonstrate that cohousing communities around the country hold their value better than conventional housing," Leach said.

Further, Spaulding said, up to 90 percent of cohousing members stay in their residences for at least a decade.

The Bohn Farm Cohousing Community will be an intergenerational development, Spaulding said. That means that ideally, the residents will vary in age from young couples just starting a family up to empty-nester seniors looking for a place to live out their golden years. Income diversity is also important, he said.

What types of housing will be built will be decided on by the residents, Spaulding said. He said that the project would likely end up with about 32 units, which could mean single-family homes, duplexes, four-plexes, eight-plexes, or a combination of different types.

Today's meeting will kick off what will likely be a six- to eight-month process, he said. The first few meetings will be informational, with the priority being to educate the public about what cohousing is and what it means to be in on the ground floor of designing their own mini-neighborhood. From there the meetings will transition into workshops, where experts will be brought in and the design-build of the neighborhood will start to be hashed out. These workshops will cost each participant a few hundred dollars, Spaulding said, but for those who follow through and become part of the community, those fees will be applied to their down payments. Once enough people sign membership agreements, then Wonderland Hill will get a loan and start building.

Spaulding said that his goal is to have 75 percent of the units sold before construction begins, although he would feel comfortable with 50 percent of them spoken for.

Both Leach and Spaulding say they expect to attract some positive attention with the Bohn Farm project, both from people who had expressed interest in the project the first time around, pre-Great Recession, and from those who wanted to but were unable to participate in some of Wonderland Hill's other cohousing developments around Boulder County.

Leach said that given everything that's transpired with the economy the past several years, he feels like now, as home sales are on the rise, some people are starting to pay more attention to what their housing purchase means. For some, getting the biggest house at the cheapest price isn't necessarily their top priority any more, he said.

"It's a bit of a custom product, so people have to appreciate the value, and the community is a part of that," Leach said.

Added Spaulding, "When I look at the demographics and what's happening here (in Longmont), this is really a prime spot to make this happen."

This home dairy farmer Bob Bohn once lived in was moved to its present location in the Bohn Farm neighborhood, previously the Donavon Brickyards, in 1928. The house and nearby barn are part of six acres where Wonderland Hill Development Co. wants to build Longmont's first cohousing community. (Lewis Geyer/Times-Call)
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LEWIS GEYER
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